Rolling Stone–13 to 17 September 2011

Rolling Stone is a new caravan Park about 40 kilometers north of Townsville. It has a great location right on the beach.  At high tide one feels like one is on a boat.

We spent a day in Townsville getting the CV Boots replaced on our car.  While we were waiting we toured the CBD.

There was strong competition to become a Capital here with the contenders being Cooktown, Cairns and Townsville. Townsville is now the Capital of North Queensland.

The Railway helped it to become preeminent and provide service to the inland towns. Once it was possible to freeze meat and transport it safely, it was possible to ship frozen beef overseas. This enabled the opening of the hinterland.

Townsville was a major staging Post during WW2 and many soldiers passed through here. The Railway Station was extremely busy. Sea was considered unsafe so everything went by rail. The fleets fighting in the Pacific and the Coral Sea sheltered in Cleveland Bay while they were awaiting engagement with the Japanese Fleet.

In the words of our guide, they walloped the Japanese Fleet in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

We spent a day on Magnetic Island. Magnetic Island is so named because Captain Cook thought it interfered with his compasses. However extensive research failed to prove this.
It is funny though how one slows down and moves immediately onto Island time so maybe that is what happened to Cook. We did an interesting tour to see around the Island which is at present a quiet and pleasant holiday back water with appealing Restaurants. Magnetic Island was a defensive location during WW2 as it overlooked Cleveland Bay.

There are gun emplacements now minus the guns, built to protect the American Fleet.

These are the first forts not protecting us against the Russians. Later as the War moved North the 'Resort' such as it was, was commandeered by the Americans for Rest and Recreation. The Americans were responsible for the roads which replaced the footpaths and travel by boat.

The ferry trip to and fro is an enjoyable journey with the evening trip right on sunset.

South Mission Beach–9 to 13 September 2011

Still going South we visited the Sugar Museum at Mourilyan.

Sugar is extracted by crushing Sugar Cane, a form of grass. Sugar is made in the leaves and concentrated in the stem (or cane) part of the grass; it grows to about 2 meters high.

It is quite hard to cut and very heavy to load and most of the museum concentrated on the development of mechanical cutters and loaders.

It is the major crop from Mossman south to Grafton. They are harvesting and refining at the moment and the air smells like toffee cooking.

We then drove south to Mission Beach, one of the nicest beaches in Australia. We camped at South Mission Beach. We have enjoyed relaxing and reading and long walks on the Beach.

Mission Beach took a direct hit from Cyclone Yasi. The beach is still lovely and the houses seem to have mostly survived.
We stayed at the Beachcomber Coconut Park.

The cafe here makes very nice coffee. If one walks along the beach towards Wongaling for about 40 minutes there is a great cafe, Nana Thai, just the sort you hope to find, home grown herbs and veggies and very refined cooking right on the Beach. If one doesn't feel like walking it is a five minute drive.

Innisfail and Flying Fish Point–7 to 9 September 2011

We drove to Innisfail with its lovely Art Deco Buildings making for a  pleasant afternoons walk around town. It is very caravan friendly and one can park easily by the river and have a cup of coffee at the Coffee Club overlooking the River. If you are in transit it is easy to walk down to the town and get groceries. We found it very easy to while away an afternoon overlooking the North Johnstone River and sipping a cup of coffee while we read the paper.

We camped out of Innisfail at the Flying Fish Point Tourist Park. Owners and Managers often love their parks and take great pride in the amenity they offer. They are frequently nicer to use than some hotels we have stayed at.   Although originally an old fashioned council park, The Flying Fish Tourist Park is beautifully landscaped and had their sites set at an approximately 45 degree angle to the road, making it very easy to back in and giving everyone privacy as one does not look directly at the camp next door.

The amenities although old style concrete blockwork, had beautiful plants at the door and a very attractive paint job on the spacious interior.  They were spotlessly clean.

 

 

 

 

The area had recently been affected by Cyclone Yasi. Although they are still repairing the foreshore there is a very pleasant walk to Flying Fish point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We did the MAMU Rainforest Canopy walk. This is in the Wooroonoonan national Park. The walk was erected where cyclone Larry had cleared the land already in 2006 so there was minimum disruption to the rainforest.

Cairns–29 August to 6 September 2011

We like Cairns as it has a lovely caravan park and nice Restaurants.

As the service town for Far North Queensland it has good tradesmen close together making it a good place to clean up after a long trip.

We had the car, the air conditioner and refrigerators serviced and had an extra diesel filter put in the fuel line.  John also fitted integrated “Clear View” towing mirrors.

We found a truck wash so John could do a first clean of the exterior of the caravan before giving it a thorough hand clean to get the red dust off. 

Tricia washed the curtains and spring cleaned the inside of the van.
We spent a day driving the remaining portion of the Bloomfield Track from Cairns to Cape Tribulation. This section is bitumen and so quite an easy drive, although you can see its dirt road antecedents and it is very narrow. Still we saw a Winnebago towing a car come down so it is suitable for large vans.

Port Douglas is one of the Ports established during the Palmer Gold Rushes, now an attractive and sophisticated tourist destination.

We visited their local market and had lunch before crossing the Daintree River on the ferry.

The Daintree and its environs was settled by hippies during the sixties and seventies and is now very appealing with a mix of conservation, sustainable farming and eco lodges to stay in. There are a large number of places to camp. 

We completed the drive up to Cape Tribulation and so closed the loop.

Tinaburra–25 to 27 August 2011

We camped at the Lakeside Motor Inn and Caravan Park in Tinaburra where we had a lovely site overlooking the lake.

It is 3 kilometers from Yungaburra, a foodie destination on the Atherton Tablelands.

It has retained its historic streetscape and it is a nice walk in for lunch or dinner. There is a wonderful French Café, Flynn's run by a New Zealander.

Chillagoe–22 to 24 August 2011

From Cooktown we drove to Chillagoe, stopping at Lakeland for a coffee and to wash the dust and seeds from the Landcruiser and the Bushtracker before proceeding further south to Chillagoe.  We stopped for coffee at the coffee shop near the Caravan Park which has excellent local coffee, and sometimes hot Date Scones.  This is your last espresso till Weipa if going North.

Chillagoe is a “tidy town” winner. According to 'The Hub" tourist information centre as best as can be discovered it was named from a nonsense word in the Sea Shanty, “Jimpsy Dru Majibbity Hoy, Jobbity Hory Pory, Hikey, Pikey, Psyche, Crikey, Chillagoe Wabaredory".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot of this area was covered by an inland sea and the karsts are the remains of fringing coral reefs. As they are mostly limestone there are caves with lovely formations within.  Erosion has also given us the balancing rock. National Parks conducts tours of three caves, Donna, named for the Madonna figure one can see, Trezkinn and the Arches. There are three more that one is allowed to explore. All others are off limits.  Bats live within the caves and some beautiful fossil remains can be found in the limestone.

 

The mining boom in North Queensland opened the area to settlement by Europeans.  Chillagoe had deposits of copper, silver, lead, mica and some gold,  most requiring smelting to extract the minerals.  This was initially done on a small scale using blast furnaces but the completion of the railway from Mareeba to Chillagoe enabled the large scale, innovative Chillagoe Smelter to commence operations.

This smelter operated almost continuously from 1901 to 1943, with fluctuating fortunes and was bought by the Queensland government in 1919. It never made a profit but enabled development of this area by providing jobs, railways, shops and associated services like Hospitals and Schools.

In 1943 smelters were built closer to current ore producing areas such as Mt. Isa.

There is a really interesting collection of old Ford Cars and BP memorabilia owned by Tom Prior who is now classified as an “Australian Living Treasure”.  We spent a fascinating two hours talking to him and viewing his many old Fords, including Model T, Ford GT 351, Mustang and various trucks and a Ford built Jeep from WWII.   Trish quite liked the sign “MEN – They’re Like Tires.  It Never Hurts to Have a Spare!”

The cemetery seems empty but there are many unmarked graves, here delineated by gravel and grave markers. The locals have put up a rotunda containing a list of all the people they know of who are buried there. In country like this people can die at private  mine workings or on the road and not be found for a long time if ever. Often there is nothing to indicate their identity so there is a list of grave markers for unknowns also.

The Chillagoe Tourist Park has a great swimming pool, up to Tricias neck at the shallow end. She had a happy half hour lap swimming.

Cooktown–14 to 21 August 2011

We drove from Endeavour Falls to Cooktown, a short drive, but with a morning tea stop as we reinflated the tyres ready for the bitumen. 

Cooktown is a small historic town surrounded by lovely countryside.  It was here that James Cook beached the Endeavour after it struck the Great Barrier Reef at high tide near Cape Tribulation. 

The Endeavour should have sunk, but for Cook’s seamanship, the disposal of 50 tonnes of stores, canons and anchor and the fact that a piece of coral stuck in the hole, allowing the fothering of a  sail positioned on the outside the hull and sucked into the hole.  This stone marks the spot where Cook tied the Endeavour to a tree on the shore.

Cooktown was founded in the wake of discovery of Gold on the Palmer River in 1872 by William Hann. In 1873 James Mulligan found 102 ounces of payable gold and this led to the Palmer River Gold Rush.  A Port was needed for the miners and one was established on the banks of the Endeavour River and called Cook's Town.

We visited the powder magazine. This provided safe storage for the explosive used on the Goldfields. On Grassy Hill we watched the sunset and smoke from a large fire burning at the airport. Built in England the Lighthouse was shipped to Cooktown in 1885. Captain Cook climbed this hill to plot his way out of the surrounding coral reefs.

We enjoyed a stroll down Charlotte Street and seeing the lovely old buildings. Cooktown once aspired to be the Capital of the North and built accordingly. The new residents didn't understand the climate and many of the buildings were destroyed in various cyclones but enough remain to allow one to imagine the town as it would have been. We had coffee at Jackey Jackeys. Jackey Jackey (Galmahra) accompanied surveyor Edmund Kennedy on his 1848 expedition North and was one of the few survivors. He showed great heroism in saving the few remaining survivors and locating Edwards body. Exploration in the Cape was tough.

We visited the Natures Powerhouse complex. This houses the Information Centre, the Vera Scarth Johnston collection of Botanical Illustrations, the Charles Tanner exhibition of local wildlife and a nice little verandah cafe. It is situated in the Botanic Gardens which are large in keeping with Cooktown's aspirations. They had a novel approach to raising funds, selling flowers from the gardens to the locals. They are beautiful tropical gardens and we got a better look at the rare red waterlily. The Solander Garden has living specimens of the plants that Daniel Solander and Sir Joseph Banks collected in 1770.

We embarked on part of the rim walk around town. Cooktown has a series of walks visitors can do and that was our first. Most of this particular walk remains within the Botanic Gardens. We walked from the Natures Powerhouse Complex to Finch Bay then Cherry Tree Bay and then via Grassy Hill to Jackey Jackey’s, a feature of our afternoons.  These walks are steep.

We visited the James Cook Museum.  It started life in 1889 as a Catholic Sisters of Mercy Convent and Girls Boarding School aiming to bring an excellent education to the girls of the far North, a fitting school for a wealthy Capital City. Girls from remote areas lived most of their educational lives at this school as going home was not an option. Cooktown declined as the Palmer Gold fields were worked out and Cairns rose to prominence. Cairns rise was due to improved road transport and the increasing reliability of flight. Cooktown had too many cyclones. The convent became a non boarding Catholic Primary School.  During WW2 Cooktown and the North were completely evacuated of civilians and the convent was requisitioned by the Americans who used it as a one of their bases for the Battle of the Coral Sea. There were some 20,000 people in Cooktown and the airport was extremely busy. There were in fact airports and Americans stationed all through the North.  One serviceman felt Portland Roads was the worst airport he was ever stationed at.  Australia was the place from which the war in the Pacific was mounted, although almost nothing of that massive effort is left behind.

After WW2 was over the military left and Cooktown was relatively uninhabited until 1948 when people started to trickle back. Cooktown was struck by a cyclone in 1949 and the Convent was in a sorry state, so the Catholic Church decided to sell. The Old Girls who had been educated there weren't having any of that and eventually it was bought by the National Trust. It was still in a bad way but fortunately the Queen decided to visit and the Government of the day decided it would be nice if she could open the James Cook Museum. She accepted. They had given themselves about 6 months to get it ready, through the wet too. They succeeded, although the paint was not yet dry in some of the rooms as she walked through the door.
An American team located and raised the anchor of the Endeavour and the guns that Cook jettisoned.  They are on display in the museum.

We took a Guurrbi Tour given by Willie Gordon to his family’s ancestral rock art site.

We visited the cemetery, part of the rim walk. This is also huge. Many of the 3,000 people buried here do not have grave sites as they couldn't afford it. Sometimes their descendants have come and given them a headstone. The Chinese monument is a shrine where funerary rites were conducted. Mostly the bones were disinterred later and sent home for burial in China. This reminded Tricia of Aboriginal practice where your bones have to return to where you were born thus completing the circle of life for you. What is interesting about this cemetery is that the people buried here are varied and also the death rate seems fairly constant throughout life. Normally one sees ages where people die, infants, women in childbirth, maybe an epidemic and then a gap where everyone left survives and then the age of adult death for that locality. Here people die at all ages.  Many people passed through the Gold Fields. For genealogical research contact the Cooktown and District Historical Society.

We walked up Mt. Cook, the final part of the rim walk.